“Hey, when you spend lotsa time makin’ cider, you get to
know your apples.So what is it?What kind of apple is ‘the Big Apple?’”

It’s just a name, Cheerless, not an apple, per se.

“I never heard of no ‘per se’ variety of apple.Do you mean ‘Melrose?’”

Now you’re just being silly.No, the “Big Apple” was a name coined by a journalist back in the 1920’s,
a guy by the name of John J. FitzGerald.He wrote sports for the old New York Morning Telegraph and started using
the phrase “big apple” to refer to horse racing in New York.It caught on with other writers of the day,
but sort of fell out of use by the 1960’s.Then some marketing whiz in the Convention and Visitors Bureau dug it out
and started a campaign around New York as the “Big Apple.”It stuck ever since.

“Bet they can’t make cider out of it.”

That’s probably a safe bet.But they do play hockey up there, and it is there, at Madison Square
Garden, where the Caps will find themselves on Sunday night.The team they will face seems to be getting
into a groove.The Rangers spent almost
the entire month of October on the road while the Garden was having some
upgrades completed.

The long stretch away from home did not agree with the
Rangers, as they went 3-6-0 in nine straight road games to open the
season.The Rangers sought to right
themselves, but did little more than tread water over the next two months.However, starting with a 4-1 win over the
Minnesota Wild back on December 22nd, the Rangers are 10-3-1 in
their last 14 games.

In those last 14 games the Rangers have outscored their
opponents by a 36-25 margin.What the
Rangers have discovered, or perhaps re-discovered – was defense and
goaltending.Six times in those 14
contests the Rangers allowed fewer than two goals to their opponent.

It is not as if the Rangers are holding opponents to an
inordinately low number of shots; they have allowed 31 shots on goal per game
in their 10-3-1 run.What they are
getting is superb goaltending.Henrik
Lundqvist is back on track after a shaky start.After going 10-15-2, 2.77, .905, unusually poor numbers for Lundqvist,
he is 6-2-1, 2.08, .935 during the Rangers’ 10-3-1 run.If anything, backup Cam Talbot, who took over
the duties when Martin Biron retired in October, has been better.Overall, the rookie is 10-3-0, 1.62, .940 in
15 appearances.In five appearances in
this recent run by the Rangers he is 4-1-0, 1.39, .950.Only twice in his 15 appearances to date has
Talbot allowed more than two goals.

Fifteen different players have shared in the goal-scoring in
the Rangers’ 10-3-1 run, none of them with more than Mats Zuccarello, who has
six.Zuccarello has five assists to go
along with the goals to lead the Rangers in points over those 14 games with 11.In three games against the Caps so far this
season he has not recorded a point, and he has but one assist in five career
games against Washington.

Rick Nash also has six goals over this 14-game stretch,
doubling his season total to date in 33 games.He has three game-winning goals in his last five games, four of them
Ranger wins.He does not have a point
against Washington in either of the two games in which he has appeared, but he
does have seven goals and eight assists in 14 career contests against the Caps.

Here is how the teams compare in their overall numbers:

1.The Rangers’
special teams have been an important element of their recent success.Their power play is 12-for-45 in their last
14 games (26.7 percent), and while their penalty kill is not extraordinarily
efficient (29-for-35; 82.9 percent), it benefits from not being tested too
often, just 2.5 times per game over this stretch.

2.One of the things
the Rangers have done very well in this 14-game run is outshoot their
opponents.In the 10-3-1 run they have
outshot their opponents on a per-game basis, 47.2 to 31.0, and have outshot
their opponents in 11 of the 14 games.

3.Of the nine
defensemen to dress for the Rangers this season, only one – Ryan McDonagh – is on
the plus side of the plus-minus ledger (plus-1).

4.This being the
back half of a back-to-back set of games for the Rangers, keep in mind that
they are 5-3-0 in the back-half of back-to-back games so far this season.One of the losses was in the last meeting of
these clubs, back on December 8th following a 4-3 overtime loss to
New Jersey the previous night.The
Rangers lost to the Caps the next night, 4-1.

5.The Rangers are
among the better possession teams in the league.They are eighth in Corsi-for percentage in
5-n-5 close situations (52.3 percent) and seventh in Fenwick for percentage (52.5
percent).They are even better in their
10-3-1 run: a Corsi-for percentage of 55.2, a Fenwick-for percentage of 55.9.

1.When the Caps lost
to Columbus by a 5-1 score on Friday, it broke a string of five straight
one-goal decisions.It was the first
time the Caps lost by three or more goals since dropping a 5-2 decision to
Philadelphia on December 17th, and it was their most lopsided loss
since Pittsburgh shutout the Caps, 4-0, on November 20th.

2.The Caps have
struggled of late, posting a 3-5-5 record over their last 13 games.Part of it is special teams.The power play is 5-for-33 in those 13 games
(15.2 percent), while the penalty kill is 28-for-39 (71.8 percent).

3.The two-goal lead
is said to be the most dangerous in hockey.Folks might be facetious about that, but two-goal wins have been hard to
come by for the Caps.Only three teams
have fewer two-goal wins than the Caps (2).

4.The Caps won the
last two meetings between these clubs.It
is the first time the Caps recorded consecutive wins against the Rangers in the
regular season since they won their last three meetings in the 2009-2010 season,
two of them at Madison Square Garden.

5.The loss to
Columbus ended a streak of nine straight games in which the Caps recorded a
Corsi-for percentage in 5-on-5 close situations over 50 percent.They are still 21st in the league
in that statistic, a ranking that might not sound impressive but is a considerable
improvement from their mid-20’s ranking where they spent much of December.

The Peerless’ Players to Ponder

New York: Derick Brassard

Until the Rangers started this 10-3-1 run over their last 14
games, Derick Brassard was idling along with a 6-10-16 scoring line in 35
games.In those last 14 games, however,
Brassard has been making plays by playmaking.He has eight assists in those 14 contests to lead the club over that
stretch and has improved his scoring line to 8-18-26 games.He has a pair of assists in three games
against the Capitals this season, his career scoring line against Washington
being 0-3-3 in nine games.

Washington: Martin Erat

There are 190 players having dressed for NHL games this
season who have yet to score a goal.Only 22 of them have had such futility with more shots on goal than
Martin Erat, who is tied with Pittsburgh’s Robert Bortuzzo at 29 shots apiece
without lighting the lamp.He has not recorded a
shot on goal in his last five games and has only seven shots on goal over his
last 12 contests.Only once this season
has Erat recorded as many as three shots on goal in a game, that coming back on
November 15th in a 4-3 Gimmick win in Detroit.He has only eight shots on goal in 17
divisional games so far.It says here,
he breaks the string on Sunday night.

Keys:

1.Hard first 20
minutes.Only one team in the league (Nashville)
has fewer wins than the Rangers when trailing at the first intermission.One win in 19 tries when trailing after 20
minutes.It can’t hurt, the Caps have
the fourth-worst record in the league when leading after 20 minutes (7-5-0).

2.No No-Names.The Rangers don’t have a lot of “names” –
Rick Nash, Brad Richards.But it is guys
like Brian Boyle or John Moore who seem to do damage to the Caps in these
meetings.The Caps have to make sure to
pay attention to the bottom half of the forward lines.

3.Dispossessed.The Rangers are on a seven game streak in
which their Corsi-for percentage at 5-on-5 close score situations is above 50
percent.In six of those games it was
over 55 percent.The Rangers have been
setting pace and controlling territory, just what you would expect from a team
on a 10-3-1 run, and the kind of thing the Caps need to address early in this
game.

In the end…

The Rangers have a fine record outside the Metropolitan
Division: 20-13-0.Within the division,
their record is much weaker.New York’s
6-8-3 record is the second worst intra-divisional record in the Metro.Only the New York Islanders’ 3-11-3 record
in-division is worse.Even in their
recent 10-3-1 run, they are only 1-2-1 against Metropolitan Division foes.The Caps can take advantage of this.It would be something to salvage the road
trip and get back on a winning track.

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The Washington Capitals enter the 2016-2017 as one of 12 franchises in the NHL never to win a Stanley Cup. Of that group, only the St. Louis Blues (48 seasons), Buffalo Sabres (45 seasons), and Vancouver Canucks (45 seasons) have gone longer never having won a Cup than the Capitals (41 seasons). Six teams came into the league after the Capitals entered the league in 1974-1975 and have won Stanley Cups: Colorado Rockies/New Jersey Devils (1976-1977), Edmonton Oilers (1979-1980), Quebec Nordiques/Colorado Avalanche (1979-1980), Hartford Whalers/Carolina Hurricanes (1979-1980), Tampa Bay Lightning (1992-1993), and the Anaheim Ducks (1993-1994).

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